Is iOS7 jailbroken yet? - <AUTHOR> https://isios7jailbrokenyet.com/ <comment><USER2> Serious question: Why bother? Why is there such an interest in using a very closed system in a way the vendor does not support if there are (more) open alternatives?

Is it because you are forced to use an iPhone by external factors, like your employer? Are there critical features missing from Android and all the others? Is it just your personal preference?

I really don't mean to offend anyone, it's just that I perceive the closed ecosystem of the iPhone as an intentional "feature" and as I personally don't like it, I would never put my money into such a closed system just to try to jailbreak it afterwards.

<comment><USER3> While there's still about zero percent chance of it happening in the near term, I have to think that long-term, Apple will port Gatekeeper to iOS. It's a near-ideal balance of security on OS X: Non-technical users can stay in the walled garden of the Mac App Store, semi-technical users can allow signed binaries, and power users can run whatever they want.

I work in the mobile healthcare space, and right now, we're starting to move away from iOS as a platform for future projects because of the restrictions and hassle of the App Store. We're not making 99-cent games and artisan to-do lists, so the fact that iPhone users are far more likely to spend money on apps doesn't matter to us – we need a platform that lets us communicate with medical devices and display information for healthcare professionals without a mercurial third party deciding what we can and can't do.

<comment><USER4> To be honest, in custom software spaces like yours, I'm surprised that iOS was ever a platform of consideration.

<comment><USER5> 4 years ago what was the only decent tablet option? The iPad.

Apple's solution for running business apps and distributing them outside the app store is actually not that bad.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly my problem. I have an iPad 2. I know that if I move off iOS5 I have to move to iOS7, which really wasn't designed with the iPad 2 in mind.

I'm now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Stay where I am and many apps (like Spotify which I pay for) no longer work, or upgrade to iOS7 and know that the iPad 2 just isn't powerful to run it in the same way in runs iOS5 (for which it was designed for).

I'm desperately waiting for a jailbreak so I can install iOS6, which I see as a half way house.

The reality is that Apple are deliberately degrading older devices, in order to make them obsolete. Of course I understand they are just building software that is designed to run on the most current and powerful of their devices, but the deliberate prevention of installs of older iOS versions when a user specifically wants it is frustrating.

In hindsight I shouldn't have bought an iPad, but there wasn't a viable alternative at the time.

<comment><USER7> I'd tend to disagree with your assessment of iOS' performance on the iPad 2. I have an iPad Air and an iPad 2 and quite frankly the iPad 2 crashes less and runs more consistently on iOS 7, as opposed to my Air. It feels as though iOS 7 wasn't ready for the Air, but it has been improving with each update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Y'know, I finally got an iPhone (a 4S), moving from Android and Meego (gosh I miss my N9...), and I thought I'd probably jailbreak to get the "freedom" I was missing. Instead, I installed iOS 7, and it does nearly everything I want it to do.

It's not perfect, I'd like to be able to load FOSS onto it without going through the app store (I don't trust TOR browsers in a marketplace like that), and a few UI niggles, but for the most part I now just use my phone for phone tasks, Siri to dump stuff into Reminders for processing later, and playing Poker on the go. I was as surprised as anyone; I've been hacking smartphones since the Sony Ericsson M600i!

</comment><comment><USER9> Personally I've found the reasons to jailbreak have decreased more and more over time. A perfect example for me is Control Center replacing what I used SBSettings for.

<comment><USER10> I tried to find an iOS bitcoin wallet. Turns out, Apple pulled them all from the store because they have mobile payment ambitions - and one doesn't let predators into ones own garden. The walled garden is beautiful, but innovation is relentlessly weeded out by its tenders. I much prefer iOS, but I was seriously creeped out by their anti-competitive practices. I can't run the software I wish to, so I'm going to buy an Android phone, even though I'd much prefer an Apple product that actually lets me run competitive software.

<comment><USER11> > ... Apple pulled them all from the store because they have mobile payment > ambitions - and one doesn't let predators into ones own garden.

And yet Pingit is still in the app store. [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/barclays- pingit/id496552142](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/barclays- pingit/id496552142)

<comment><USER10> Search for it on your iPhone. It's no longer there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Jailbreaking is also critical to ensuring that the disabled are able to use > their mobile devices as easily as possible.

This reason, while good and noble, feels really wonky. From what i understand, iOS's accessibility has much miles better then Android's accessibility options. If their main motives is to give a better mobile experience to people with special needs, maybe focusing on implementing these improvements system wide changes would be time better spend.

You work hard to make these changes then iOS 7.x.y comes out and the user updates by mistake and loses all the changes a jailbreak gives. It is this constant fighting with the system that has made staying with iOS less appealing these days.

<comment><USER13> Worrying about updates is a fact of everyday life for people dependent on accessibility features, on the OS as well as the APP level. Updates to apps often include changes to UI, which completely change the way blind users interact with the App via VoiceOver. This means that with every update there is a risk of the app no longer being accessible or having to relearn the entire interface.

It's true that Apple's accessibility features are miles better than Android's, but they aren't perfect. Jailbreaking allows people to add the functionality they need that isn't currently supported.

A great example of this is f.lux which is an amazingly useful app for people with low-vision, but is not supported on non-jailbroken devices.

<comment><USER14> f.lux is single handedly keeping me on my iOS 5 jailbreak. I used to need an hour to get to sleep at night. Now with f.lux it takes me 5-10 minutes.

Absolutely no way I'd use a phone with regular lighting now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem I have with this website is that it attempts to change the dynamics from one of "people who do things that are fun to make devices more open" to one of "people who do things to win cash prizes". Meanwhile, it changes the dynamics in the minds of the people contributing: normally, people contribute after the fact to the teams that built something that they found of value; under the model of this website, people contribute ahead of time, and then hope that the thing that is released works for their specific device, and if it doesn't they are kind of out of luck.

I've seen the effects of bounties in the Android ecosystem, and they are quite negative. I tried to explain this to the person behind this project (Elizabeth Stark), but she really didn't seem to care: in essence, she's currently working on a project that is a crowd funding platform for software, and she wants to use the iOS community as a test case; she didn't want to spend any time thinking about the ramifications of her decisions going into the project, and she didn't send me a response about the issues I saw with her project until this morning (coincident with the release of her website).

<comment><USER16> Hi Saurik, I'd love to hear your response to the substantive aspects of my email as opposed to an ad hominem attack. I didn't send it until this morning because I was sick and traveling for the holidays.

<comment><USER15> [Some context for others: when I first was responding to the idea of this bounty program, it was to someone else who had previously been considering working with Elizabeth; I was contacted in a kind of after-the-fact/"FYI" style. This was when the only real information was "bounty for iOS 7 jailbreak", without most of the extra restrictions that are now in place on the program, such as "open source". At the time, it for example seemed clear that evad3rs--the group that has been making the jailbreaks for the last two years--was going to get the bounty anyway. I already had started to bring up the incentive structure issues, and managed to get this other person to drop his involvement with the project. My original e-mail to Elizabeth thereby only talked about these issues, which is why this comment has to delve so deeply into the "final" point.]

So, your e-mail seems to make four points. The first point, taking up two paragraphs, is related to your career and your project. In these paragraphs, you did not address any of the specific example reasons I could come up with for why you were involved, and if anything simply raised a few more. These paragraphs, however, are largely ignorable.

The third point (setting off the second for a minute) was the argument made to attempt to address an incentive change on the side of the people building jailbreaks. This argument hinges on a specific example of a previous bounty, claiming that it did not cause the ramifications I am predicting.

> While I am sensitive to your concerns around community incentives, it's > unlikely that our approach will threaten them. For example, when Adafruit > created a prize for open Kinect drivers, instead of devolving into a > community of mercenaries, it enabled an ecosystem of Kinect hackers to > flourish.[1]

[1]: [https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect- pro...](https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-project-the- ok-prize-get-1000-bounty-for-kinect-for-xbox-360-open-source-drivers/)

The problem with this argument is that it is looking at entirely the wrong level: you are claiming that by having the driver for Kinect get constructed, people were able to start hacking on Kinect, causing an ecosystem on the other side of the driver to flourish. We already have that ecosystem on the other side of the jailbreak.

Instead, we are looking at the actual construction of the jailbreaks here; the correct analogy is to instead look at the market for construction of drivers for closed video game controllers. What you need to demonstrate is that a "success" for that crowd funding doesn't lead the people who were working on that driver to end up with different incentives, or cause other people watching to expect the same (again, in a "success" situation: I know people who work with Kinect, and I'd never heard the driver was crowd funded, so any community effects would be quite narrow due to the limited reach; likely as it was so little money).

FWIW, that people's incentives change in these situations is well documented: this isn't just my assertion, this is something you can read about in books like "Punished by Rewards". Given that a new jailbreak is needed at least once a year (and in a perfect world, would happen no less than twice a year), this is critical: you are playing an iterative game, and have to think about the ramifications on incentives not immediately, but a few steps ahead.

In reality, the community is already anticipating the release of an iOS 7 jailbreak (evad3rs has already publicly stated that they have all the pieces they need and are just working on implementing and finalizing). We (the community of people who use these jailbreaks: I do not build them myself) thereby are not in a position where this bounty is going to change anything: it is just going to change how funds are directed (5%, for example, will be given directly to your new company, rather than all of it to the people who build the tools) and the expectations people have related to them, it isn't going to incentive construction of a new community that otherwise wouldn't exist.

You then had a forth point, the goal of which was to assuage concerns that people leaving contributions would have different expectations. This argument was just "we state this clearly on the website"; <sarcasm>which, as we all know, works out wonderfully in the case of Kickstarter projects: it isn't like I've ever heard of people angry that they didn't get the thing they wanted, or that it didn't work well, as Kickstarter is very clear that they are not a way to preorder products</sarcasm>. You will need to come up with a much stronger argument here... if anything, I think you've just dug a deeper hole ;P.

[my comment is apparently too long for Hacker News; given that I often write very very long comments, I'm really surprised I've never run into this limitation before, and so wonder if it is new ;P. however, this comment is thereby split and I will reply with the rest]

<comment><USER15> [continuing this comment from the earlier part]

"Finally" (in the aforementioned second point), your e-mail makes the argument for the jailbreak tool being open source. You feel like this "could open the doors to greater community contribution, encouraging larger groups of people to work together to solve the problems more quickly". The argument makes sense: if jailbreaking were secretive and closed (which is a bullet you dodged, btw: on Android, where bounties are common, jailbreak tools are not only often closed source but techniques are hoarded and under-described so as to win more bounties <\- you actually _need_ this open source clause to not fall into the obvious trap) people are not in a position to learn how all of the systems of Apple's device work in a way that would let them later build their own tools.

Would it surprise you to find out that most of the code in a jailbreak is already open source, and that the only parts that are not tend to be the GUI and the specific exploit technique for that one specific version of iOS?

\- All of the libraries that are use to connect to the device in its normal mode are licensed under LGPL (they are part of a suite called libimobiledevice, which was primarily developed by members of the iPhone Dev Team, and now maintained by nikias from evad3rs).

\- The libraries used to talk to the device in recovery and DFU mode are open source and licensed under GPL (developed by posixninja, who has been maintaining them recently under the openjailbreak project).

\- The libraries used to decrypt and modify image files (kernels, devices trees, disks, and bootloaders) has been open source for years (developed and maintained by planetbeing from evad3rs). The same developer (planetbeing) has released a number of utility libraries like this, including ones to download portions of IPSW files from Apple's servers without having to download the whole file (this is why jailbreaks never need to distribute copyrighted content). All of this code is under GPL.

It is thereby not just useless but insulting that in your e-mail you make the point that "the jailbreaking teams are not an island—they rely heavily on FOSS software in their work": the people who build these tools (which again, does not include myself) quite often release code for large or critical parts of their work, and almost exclusively do so under "free software" licenses.

In fact, many previous jailbreak tools have been or have become open source, and currently the tool to jailbreak the iPhone 4 on iOS 7 (opensn0w) is itself open source (under GPL). Now, one thing that is really interesting here: this project (which has now existed for years) actually tried to crowd fund itself (which, to be 100% clear, doesn't cause the same kinds of issues as a third- party bounty program) and failed. Out of its $3,000 it got $30.

[http://www.indiegogo.com/opensn0w](http://www.indiegogo.com/opensn0w)

This, of course, flies in the face of your comment that the goal is to set a precedent of jailbreaks being open source: and in case you think I'm playing up one example, the iOS 4 jailbreaks from comex were open source as well; the source code for both JailbreakMe 2.0 and JailbreakMe 3.0 were released (I believe fairly soon after the jailbreak, but clearly as this was all years ago "soon" is relative: there are tons of open source examples).

[http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/19/jailbreakme-now- open...](http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/19/jailbreakme-now-open-source/)

The team behind the tool greenpois0n (which includes the aforementioned posixninja) also open sourced much of their work as "syringe". The opensn0w tool in fact uses a lot of this code, as have been a number of third-party tools based on this older limera1n exploit (which, interestingly enough, was itself released to the community by geohot giving everyone a few lines of source code for how to implement it, as he wanted people to use that exploit instead of SHAtter).

[http://www.ijailbreak.com/applications/greenpois0n-jailbreak...](http://www.ijailbreak.com/applications/greenpois0n-jailbreak- now-open-source/)

The argument that people are somehow not able to learn how to jailbreak things because nothing is open source thereby doesn't make any sense even on the face of it; again: the only things that tend to be closed source are GUIs and transient one-off device-specific techniques. The main reason these things tend to be closed source is that our community has a serious problem with scams: people like to try to charge people for jailbreak tools or claim they have tools that work in places they don't; everyone wants to "build a jailbreak", but in practice people just want "to take someone's tool, change the GUI, claim it works better than it does, and then charge $20 for it".

In your mind, this seems to be related to the idea that "I don't want them making money when I'm not making money: I want to make the money, so that's why it is closed source", but _that just demonstrates you are seeing this through the eyes of the wrong kinds of incentives_. You say that "getting financial support up front reduces the perverse incentive to keep the source closed so that other groups cannot profit from it without having built it", but in fact that doesn't change that users will get scammed and lose money: the argument made by the jailbreak teams has never been "you should give money to us, not them", but instead "jailbreaks should be free". It is simply clear that you don't understand the incentive structures already in place in this community, even while you feel like you want to change them.

You might then argue that it is horrible that these techniques are hidden, but that itself could not be further from the case: the people who build these jailbreaks generally give talks about how the jailbreaks work at conferences around the world, and they are well documented in the security community through everything from articles on websites to entire books. (At JailbreakCon, Nikias from evad3rs gave an hour and a half long presentation on exactly how the iOS 6 jailbreak worked as part of a time slot that was only a half an hour long, a story which I continue to find absolutely hilarious ;P.)

Really, the only sentence I can come up with from your e-mail that has some weight behind it is the argument that "users of such a jailbreak will be able to audit the changes made to the firmware of one of their most important pieces of hardware". FWIW, this is a cause that I appreciate.

However, you are addressing an audience of people who are primarily getting software from Apple, none of which is itself audited by the community, and which the people you are attacking (and yes: an implication "you can't trust these people" is an attack) have demonstrated on numerous occasions is insecure or actively damaging (such as with the various logging and reporting daemons). The modifications made are also fairly easy for people in the community to pull apart: maybe not to you, but to 99.99% of users the source code isn't helpful anyway... that doesn't mean that results are not able to be "audited".

I feel like the best you could thereby hope for is some kind of "strife" that you want to cause: to pit people against one another, spiting one movement (open hardware) to help another (open software). Open hardware is a much more serious problem that very few people are really fighting for, and iOS jalbreaking is one of the few case examples that can be pointed to when lobbying (such as with Congress, or the Library of Congress) for why these freedoms are important and potentially obtaining laws to guarantee them. It would be an absolute shame to see one of the few weapons we have in that war be sacrificed because you felt that tens of millions of people had incorrectly allocated their trust.

<comment><USER16> You're missing the point here—we're grateful that people in the jailbreak community release things as FOSS, but the majority of jailbreaks as you yourself mention are not FOSS themselves, which is part of what motivated Chris, who proposed the prize, and myself.

It seems to me that that opensn0w campaign may have been fake (there are a lot of those on IndieGoGo).

And to be clear, in talking to friends in the security space, the auditing the code aspect was a huge concern, so I'm glad we can at least agree on something. :)

We're also planning on helping to fund many open hardware projects, and I'll actually be speaking at the SF Hardware Startup meetup tonight to solicit ideas from the community.

<comment><USER15> > You're missing the point here—we're grateful that people in the jailbreak > community release things as FOSS, but the majority of jailbreaks as you > yourself mention are not FOSS themselves, which is part of what motivated > Chris, who proposed the prize, and myself.

In other places you've stated the reason he wanted this prize was to get software on his iPhone so he could help with some accessibility issues. This is an incentive that aligns with long-term open hardware, not short term open software. You can't have it both ways. If you are really dropping all of the incentive arguments I'm making and want to concentrate on open source, that's fine: but let's get our stories straight.

> It seems to me that that opensn0w campaign may have been fake (there are a > lot of those on IndieGoGo).

I just contacted the developer of opensn0w: no, that was not fake, it just didn't take off. I personally can assert to you that opensn0w (which many people are using right now) is not itself a fake (and I'm one of the people who generally are asked to determine this ;P).

> And to be clear, in talking to friends in the security space, the auditing > the code aspect was a huge concern, so I'm glad we can at least agree on > something. :)

I talked about auditing changes, not auditing code, and I even explicitly stated that the code was not in any way a concern to someone who really knows what they are doing, so no: we don't really agree on this :/. I have on many occasions, in articles and talks, made the argument that open source is overrated, and that what really matters is open hardware: that in addition to the gap between source code and machine code decreasing over time due to better analysis tools and frameworks, that as long as hardware is capable of being closed off it doesn't matter how much of the code is open <\- the iOS jailbreak community is at the front line of this particular battle.

> We're also planning on helping to fund many open hardware projects, and I'll > actually be speaking at the SF Hardware Startup meetup tonight to solicit > ideas from the community.

FWIW, having third-parties construct open hardware doesn't really help the cause of forcing large companies who make closed hardware to provide means of opening it; that said, I do appreciate that you have future goals, but it may have been more useful to start with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> SG- I'm not anti JB or anything, and used to JB my devices all the time but for the most part iOS has changed a lot since the early days and like others I find I don't need to JB to use it how I want now.

I do wish you could JB the last ATV version that has been out over a year for XBMC goodness. ATV2 is still one of the best XBMC devices out there but only support 720p.

</comment><comment><USER17> Would you pay an extra $8/mo to instantly have your jailbreak on every update? Then buy a developers license.

<comment><USER18> Nobody here or on that site have any use for rooting (jailbreak is such a silly term). They just want to be cool.

Cory doctoraw, ifixit ceo... It's just a publicity stunt.

And everyone in this thread? They keep dumping their money happily on the latest device. Even though ios7 does zero more than a rooted ios6 (the only new feature that is not aesthetic is the control bar, which is better on ios6 with unofficial code anyway)

<comment><USER19> When I had an iPhone 4 I had a use for rooting: to run an ssh server so I could easily transfer files from/to my iphone without dealing with itunes or other special software.

However, it turned out that the real solution was just to switch to an Android phone that not only allows me to use my phone as a drive when plugged in, but also doesn't have the software restrictions that made running a daemon impossible in the first place.

I haven't really kept up with ios so this might not be a problem now, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It might be helpful to have secondary prizes for jailbreaks for only some of the models - i.e., maybe the 4S won't be jailbroken but all the others are; this still deserves some commendation.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just pitched in $10. I'll agree with previous comments that the reason for jailbreaking has decreased in recent years, but I'll be damned if I don't want root access on my phone. There's a level of control I've come to appreciate and desire as I code and deploy software, and I'd like that to extend to the one device I use the most in my life. The reason for me, at least, is "freedom," even if idealized and largely inconsequential. It's the spirit of the matter.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think we've transitioned into a world where no one can assume that a given device/OS combination will be jailbroken in just a few months. The state of the art of security for physical devices will be good enough, such that only used equipment and older versions will be jailbroken.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why can't people be patient? Jailbreaks exist for iOS 7. Be patient, and it will be released sometime soon. iH8sn0w gave an ETA of before 2014. They're carefully picking when to release. Don't rush things.

<comment><USER24> If one is in existence why not release now?

<comment><USER25> It's possible they're waiting for Apple to finish the first round of iOS7 minor updates before they reveal the exploit they're using.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Man, this takes me back to watching the Jailbreak community like a hawk back in like 2008 or something when I had an iPod touch and I was waiting for iOS 3 to be jailbroken. Man, those were some really fun times.

I can remember scanning the forums for hours, knowing that there would be a jailbreak soon, but not knowing when. I remember when the first untethered jailbreak got released, in all it's sketchy, poorly explained glory, and carefully going through the lengthy procedure to make it work.

Aaaahhhhh memories...

</comment><comment><USER27> I donated just to be in the leaderboard. Gamification is the solution. /bye

</comment><comment><USER28> Why does it matter if it's "open" or not? Stop trying to break other people's stuff already. We all want things our own way, so why not respect other people's ways as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> How about encouraging people to not buy their own jail with the money?

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems like making profit by jailbreaking. Apple lawyers would like this.

</comment><comment><USER31> apparently not. sad face</comment>


RIAA CEO Hopes SOPA Protests Were a 'One-Time Thing' - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=466&doc_id=239958

<comment><USER2> The SOPA/PIPA debacle revealed a few interesting things.

1\. The public can be roused to fight bills like this... at least once. What about the next ten times these bills, or parts of them, are reintroduced under different names or tacked onto other bills? Sherman is probably right when he says that lobbyists will win in the long term.

2\. Hollywood's economic importance is literally dwarfed by that of internet companies like Google. Even ignoring the rights of citizens, the mere cost of implementing SOPA/PIPA would cause far more harm to the U.S. economy than it could possibly prevent. SOPA/PIPA was like shooting your horse in the head in order to thwart horse-thiefs you only _think_ you saw.

3\. Why does Hollywood get preferential treatment? A long history of lobbying. When Hollywood was threatened with federal content regulation laws in the 20's they responded by adopting a self-imposed production code (half-heartedly at first) and also by lobbying. Although the code is long dead, Hollywood has never slackened their lobbying efforts.

4\. Hollywood has been getting a free ride. While Hollywood was once happy just to avoid falling under federal regulation, now they seek (and have gained) regulatory capture. Copyright life seems to be forever tied to the age of Mickey Mouse. Laws like DMCA have forced taxpayers to pay for protection of Hollywood content. Tax laws are written so that wildly successful movies that earn far more than they cost can be losses on paper, while the profits are siphoned off through tax loopholes without a penny going to the government except as campaign donations. If Apple was run by Hollywood, they'd be reporting a loss every quarter and laughing all the way to the Cayman islands.

The big conclusion:

Net companies are bigger than Hollywood and have a lot more capital to spend lobbying. SOPA/PIPA was a declaration of war by Hollywood on internet companies. The MPAA tried to have legislature passed that would shore up their own interests at the expense of Google, Yahoo, etc. while doing more harm to the U.S. economy than good. Even if the grass roots movement that stopped PIPA/SOPA was a one time thing, it likely will not be necessary the next time. Big Net money is rolling into Washington as we speak.

</comment><comment><USER3> He's obviously new on the job.

We've been doing this since 1998. He'll get sick of it and quit like the rest of them before him.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be so sure. This particular guy may be gone to retire on his private island or whatever, but the industry still will be there. And so far they are winning and the rest of the internet is losing. Right now they already acquired capability to take any site off the internet merely by sending a message to the services provider, and take any content off a popular site like YouTube by using an interface specially built for them, often without any human intervention or consideration for real rights. They are completely exempt from any due process and from the concept of "innocent until proven guilty". When it comes to copyright, it's shoot first, sort out later, and they're holding the biggest guns ever. So the industry confidence that internet users will get tired and with relentless pressure the industry will succeed to take more and more rights from them is completely founded. This is what happened repeatedly up until now, and winning one instance doesn't change it. There will be more laws like SOPA, and if past experience predicts anything there is a very big chance that they will succeed in sneaking it in one way or another. At least that's exactly what happened till now and we don't have an effective solution for that - so far they had only a handful of failures, and they found new ways of doing the same. For example, they failed with SOPA that was to give them DNS control - but they effectively control big parts of DNS already, see recent HN stories about Godaddy and Verisign domain takedowns. And they won't stop until they will have same as SOPA and more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is shaping into a battle cry of the IP rent seekers:

"[We fight against] foreign criminals selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals to Americans?"

second only to "think of the children" and "Save American Jobs Law".

<comment><USER6> Where "counterfeit" usually means totally legit pharmaceuticals overseas that someone in the US didn't make money off of (or enough money off of).

<comment><USER7> Up here in the Socialist Republic of Canada, the counterfeit drug criminals are so entrenched in power that when you fill a prescription, the pharmacist is required _by law_ to offer you the counterfeit drug alongside the brand- name drug, usually at about 25% of the brand name drug's price.

Worse, the spin-masters in power have taken control of the conversation, everyone in Canada calls them "generic" drugs, as if molecules and atoms were identical to each other and there's no difference besides the logo stamped on the pill and the label glued on the bottle.

And we're prisoners of the system, trapped in the endless nightmare of free health care.

<comment><USER8> Is the generic model enough to fund actual R&D for new medicine? Eg, if generic were legalized everywhere, including the US, and it undercut pharmaceuticals so much that they went out of business, would new drug development cease?

Not that I'm a fan of intellectual property, but I do recognize that there are a few areas where the upfront investment to produce the product is so massive, and copying the final product so easy, that it might make sense to guarantee the profits for a period of time.

Does the pro-generic side have any data or counterpoint to that?

<comment><USER9> Back in the day before "big pharma", medical advances came out of Universities, many of them publicly funded. I think if the big pharma were cut off at the knees funding-wise, we'd see a resurgence in academic research.

Which I personally think is far better, because typically (not always of course) academics will share and collaborate, instead of being in walled gardens.

<comment><USER8> Ah, thanks, didn't know that. I suspect that would be far better for another reason as well - less funding and brain power spent on Viagra and 'quality of life' drugs, and more on cancer, AIDS, and other major but perhaps less profitable epidemics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good luck with that.

Even some of the normals around me are start are starting to get how broken SOPA/PIPA were and how wrongheaded the "content provders" actions have been.

Not many, unfortunately, but still ...

</comment><comment><USER11> OK. I watched the whole interview and, I have to say, Sherman seems to understand technology better than I had figured. He even appears tolerable, approachable and maybe even someone who would listen to reason. Is it a front? We have every reason to think it is.

Personally, I never would have thought I'd hear the RIAA talk about millions of songs for $10/month. Question of course is, did the RIAA kill the subscription model and then announce it's failure? Still, $10/month is pocket change in exchange for never having to hunt for music.

There is an invisible sheath of social truth. The elephant in the room. We've all pirated music, software or movies at some point. None of us openly admit it, and if asked we all say "Ya, the artist should be compensated". Then we pirate more music and movies, proclaiming, "They're the thieves! They give artists X% of the profits!". True. But I still don't see an argument for pirating music - or at least, pirating music but pretending you think it is wrong.

I don't think anyone wants to pirate music. What people want is convenience. If the incentive for route X is greater than route Y, route X is destined to be the popular route by default. $10/month vs. searching the pirate bay every time I hear a new song I like? $10/month wins.

The RIAA is generally evil, don't get me wrong. But I imagined a complete jack ass at the helm, and I am surprised to see something different.

<comment><USER12> I openly admit it. When I hear a song I like I immediately download the artist's entire discography. And then when they come to town, I go to their shows.

<comment><USER13> You should add: and then I also go to itunes or Amazon and buy their entire catalog legally.

<comment><USER14> The point's been made that artists make so little from downloads and streaming that it literally isn't worth it for you to purchase from iTunes or Amazon downloads compared to, say, buying one out of five albums on CD or vinyl. And maybe also purchasing merchandise directly from the artists website.

<comment><USER13> Either way, you should at least purchase the music via legal means.

<comment><USER15> Why? Give me a good reason. This is exactly what tomkin, the top-level commenter, meant (or at least my understanding of it). It's just "politically correct" to say/do that, but rarely does anyone ever ask why. So let me do just that.

Because it's "illegal" to acquire it by other means?

The law is not a moral authority by any means. At least it shouldn't be. _Ideally_ , things are against the law because they are considered to be morally wrong. The other way 'round (something is morally wrong because it is against the law) is a similar fallacy as confusing correlation with causation. It just doesn't follow.

There's a quite nice saying in Germany, frequently attributed to Berthold Brecht, that roughly translates to "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes obligation.". That's essentially the current situation - injustice is law. Piracy is but one of many forms of resistance.

To calm our conscience?

I don't think downloading music is wrong. In fact, I don't think sharing anything can be considered wrong in any way, and I must actually commend the content industry for managing to twist and pervert the public's perception of morality to such a degree. It's the most natural action a human being can undertake. And digital data isn't scarce - there's absolutely no reason _not_ to share it. It's the refusal to share (and the active battle against it) that should be considered highly unethical.

To support the artist?

There're better ways that don't involve dead and obsolete business models (distribution of information, which is virtually cost-free today), such as going to see a show, or maybe buying their merchandise. I know some people who frown on donations because they argue that would make artists beggars, but I prefer to liken donations to tip money. Crowd-funding is slowly becoming more accepted and might face wide-spread adoption in a few years. I like this approach because it's essentially a service based model - the artist gets paid once to create something, and it can be freely used by everyone when it's complete - there's no monopoly rent on something that's not inherently scarce.

And finally, accept the fact that not everyone is able to live off their art, and that's fine too. No one is entitled to succeed in a given job, and no one is entitled to protection of their business model if something comes along that makes it obsolete.

<comment><USER13> Piracy isn't a moral resistance 'code'. It is just a way to get things for free with a (very small) chance of any repercussions. If some new magic technology was invented overnight, and the risk of being sued went up to 99% every time you tried to download something in violation of copyright I think this 'moral code' would disappear quite quickly. This is a cover up for 'I want free shit, and I am not going to get in trouble, so I do it'.

How about going to each and every artist you believe you should be able to download for free and get their permission to copy their art first? They created their work for your entertainment, it should be their decision to say weather you can have it for free, or for a price.

<comment><USER15> _> Piracy isn't a moral resistance 'code'._

Why? Because you say so? I don't think so.

 _> It is just a way to get things for free with a (very small) chance of any repercussions. If some new magic technology was invented overnight, and the risk of being sued went up to 99% every time you tried to download something in violation of copyright I think this 'moral code' would disappear quite quickly. This is a cover up for 'I want free shit, and I am not going to get in trouble, so I do it'._

What I'm saying is that these repercussions are completely unjustified and morally wrong. Appeals to (imaginary, and quite frankly, _impossible_ ) force don't change that. You're essentially saying the same as "If being gay was against the law and we had the power to crack down on gay people, that would make being gay wrong".

 _> How about going to each and every artist you believe you should be able to download for free and get their permission to copy their art first?_

I must present you with a counter-question instead: based on what moral authority should an artist (or anyone else) be allowed to _forbid_ me to copy art?

Let me say it again: there's nothing more inherently good and natural than sharing. If you are opposed to sharing (of a truly non-scarce resource, at that), then it's you who's arguing against one of, if not _the_ most universally accepted ethical practice of humanity.

Take note that nobody can be forced to share. The opposite, however, holds true as well: you can't force people to stop sharing. Or to put it in another, polemic way: if you don't want people to share your art, lock it up in your basement and never show it to anyone.

 _> They created their work for your entertainment, it should be their decision to say weather you can have it for free, or for a price._

I don't see why. Sure, they can charge people for distribution done by themselves if they so chose. That doesn't mean they have any authority to tell people who acquired a copy to further share said copy, with or without compensation.

<comment><USER13> You believe it is your right to get someone elses hard earned work for free, just because it is only a few clicks away and without consequence, and also ignore their wishes if they ask to be compensated?

Logical conclusion: We can consider whatever you do 9-5 to pay the bills also as your 'art'. I as your boss now decree that you are entitled to $0 compensation this month.

You are extremely happy now yes, because 'art wants to be free'?

<comment><USER16> Don't be ridiculous. There is an employer/employee contract about getting paid what you were _promised_. Has nothing to do with _what_ you did. They could have had you do absolutely nothing but sit in a chair and wait for a week because there was no job to do and you _still get paid_.

But if you shovel a walkway the adjacent store gets to use it without paying a dime.

<comment><USER13> The artist is promised a cut of a sale of an album when it is _purchased_ , since it is being _copied_ (which is still _illegal_ if I'm not mistaken) and not _purchased_ he isn't getting paid either. Hence he should be getting _paid_ for his work.

It seems the sentiment has become one of: since music and movies are easy enough to copy online without me getting in trouble, and for free, the price of art should also drop to zero as a whole. This doesn't look like something anyone in the music or movie industry would think is a good thing would it?

<comment><USER16> But nobody at all promised to purchase the album. That's the difference. An employer agreed upfront to purchase your work. I could promise you a cut of just about any action, and you wouldn't ipso facto be morally owed people performing that action.

What matters is not what an industry thinks, but what is best for society. I personally think a couple decades of copyright is a good thing but it does not equate to employment.

<comment><USER13> I don't really equate the fact that music has become easy to copy that the expectation is you shouldn't have to pay for it anymore if you don't feel like it, and that is best for society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Mmmm. Self-serving vitriol. I would really like to be able to see step-by-step these 'advocates' thinking processes and sidesteps over any (if any remaining) moral qualms.

As long as it's easier to pirate than get stuff through legitimate channels, people will pirate. And people will always fight having to jump through hoops and being treated like they are criminals all the time.

My current pirating usually has to do with books that I've signed out using Overdrive and are then unable to read! Instead of fighting with Overdrive and reinstalling it, hunting down passwords, or finding out I can't read it on device X, I usually have a pirated copy within 2 minutes. Then when I'm done I return the Overdrive book. (That's the one function that seems to work on the damn thing.)

</comment><comment><USER18> The RIAA has one of the biggest misnomer names in the lobbying business. They serve the interests of record labels and the plutocracy who maintains control and legislation of that control.

Not artists.

The sooner they cease to be an issue the better.

<comment><USER19> Just standard propaganda. Pro-Life, PATRIOT Act, "enhanced interrogation"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> From larger history perspective, I hope the RIAA and rest of the information distribution cartel is a one time thing.

Knowing history I have little hope that will be the case.

</comment><comment><USER21> If SOPA were limited to indicted suspects who sold counterfeit, dangerous, prescription-required drugs, I'd support it wholeheartedly.

<comment><USER22> The sad thing is that even at that angle, their real motivation is to shut down foreign pharmacies selling generic drugs (often made on the same production line as their branded equivalent) directly to Americans without the price-gouge they're able to inflict with their market dominance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> And I hope that someone gives me a free Ferrari that runs on water.

</comment><comment><USER24> Cary Sherman, the RIAA CEO, has a degree from Harvard in law. Sherman's compensation package from the RIAA was $3.2 million. In 2010, Sherman helped the RIAA secure a $105 million settlement from LimeWire for copyright infringement. The guy is a self described lobbyist and he has the guts to challenge google and wikipedia of demagogy? (a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public).

He's probably smart enough to realize the typical "you're a hipocrite" backlash, I wonder what his goal in this piece is? If we are going to win the internet censorship, internet ownership, and intellectual property legal battles we have to find a way to make it financially unwise to launch campaigns to sustain business models that can't tolerate freedom to transmit any data we want with uncensored internet connections.

<comment><USER25> I think it's important to realize that we (the general public) are not the intended audience for statements like this. The RIAA/MPAA are lobbyist Organizations that are failing to pass legislature. They are legal teams that are losing steam in the court room. Their "customers"/investors are the various studios that have banded together to find means to sustain a dying business model.

Make no mistake, these are the death throes of the RIAA/MPAA

These statements lack the confidence of secure financial backing. These statements are basically saying, "We are doing what you asked of us, it's not our fault it isn't working", and the studios aren't amused.

<comment><USER26> Spot on. There's no other reason for a NYT op-ed other than to send the message that: "Hey we're doing what you paid us to do; what do you want from us?!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here is an idea..since RIAA and MPAA like closed deals so much lets every 6 months stage the same protest to remind them that its still somewhat WRONG!

<comment><USER28> This sounds like a job for CRON.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think they probably were. Copyright holders can just keep trying to pass the same law, people will get tired of resisting, and it'll happen. In light of that, the complaint that they were unable to get out their side of the story strikes me as canny and disingenuous. They'll get what they want.

If Wikipedia and other sites tried to do the blackout thing again, my bet is it would garner quite a backlash from users. People can care, but only so much and only for so long.

</comment><comment><USER24> Lets give Hollywood censorship rights at the dns level on one condition. The government absorb mpaa, riaa and hollywood as an unholy appendage of all the other slow moving buracratic nightmare agencies sucking tax dollars from the people.</comment>


Cold Boot Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.f-secure.com/cold-boot-attacks/ <comment><USER2> Everyone's quickly jumping in to post "physical access is not secure", while over there Apple have iPhones that appear to be almost completely secure against all but the most dedicated state-level attacks (and of course compromised accounts). We can do better, and should. Without compromising the freedom to change operating system.

Mind you we also need to keep pressing on security for the desktop, against ransomware and malicious installs. Again without compromising freedom of choice.

<comment><USER3> There are so many easier way to compromise the computers of 99% of the population that this particular flaw, while interesting, doesn't really appear all that critical to me. How many people (or even companies) bother to encrypt their hard drives these days? Not many in my experience. And for those who do how hard will it be to phish the credentials using basic social engineering?

If you're carrying nuclear codes then yeah, you should be worried about these attacks. If you're security officer for a small company then you probably have a long list of things to worry about before you have to consider cold boot vulnerabilities.

Furthermore if you're worried about an attacker having physical access to your computer what about simply installing a keylogger or a device that broadcasts your display for instance? That seems massively easier and faster to pull off than the attacks described here.

<comment><USER2> > If you're security officer for a small company then you probably have a long > list of things to worry about before you have to consider cold boot > vulnerabilities.

Do you have laptops? Do you keep any personal data on them? Are you subject to GDPR? Then you do need to worry at least somewhat: [https://www.databreachtoday.com/data-breach-another- stolen-l...](https://www.databreachtoday.com/data-breach-another-stolen- laptop-a-4272)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So when are we getting encrypted RAM?

With all the talk I hear about "cache being the new RAM", since it's so much faster, particularly the L1, it sounds like it would make sense to have some transparent encryption going on. A random key generated at power on, then kept inside the CPU, and instantly lost at power off, would be enough to secure the contents of DIMMs against attacks like this.

<comment><USER3> Somebody could put a hardware keylogger on your keyboard interface instead. Or de-solder your CPU and replace it with a backdoored version.

<comment><USER5> Seriously?

How many backdoored CPU attacks have you heard of before?

If you need protection against that, might as well live inside a vault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Cold boot attacks aren't new. They were developed by a research group back > in 2008

Older than that. E.g. Pettersson's talk at CCCamp 2007.

<comment><USER7> I'd be surprised if some analog of this didn't come out in the 80's. The fundamentals were all there, even arpanet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> physical access = compromised system

There are things you can do to mitigate this problem, but once someone has physical access to a computer they have many pathways to gaining access to data and control.

<comment><USER9> This is already not true for modern iPhones. I think the time to stop accepting this has come. We should demand better from commodity devices.

<comment><USER10> I think most disagreement in this thread comes from not separating two very different cases.

1) I got access to you hardware and I want to extract data from it

2) I got access to your hardware and I get to give it back to you and you continue using it as if nothing happened

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's why the #1 rule of security is physical security. If someone has physical access to your computer, it's pretty much game over.

<comment><USER12> Tell that to the FBI trying to get into an iPhone

<comment><USER11> They succeeded...

[https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/28/news/companies/fbi-apple- ip...](https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/28/news/companies/fbi-apple-iphone-case- cracked/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cold boot, you keep using this word and you don't know what it means. Or is it me who have a screwed definiton of cold boot?

<comment><USER14> As defined in the article: "when a computer is reset without following proper procedures (what's known as a cold/hard reboot)"

Even if you disagree, "cold boot attack" is the established name for the actual attack, the new aspect presented here is how to circumvent a certain firmware protection that would overwrite the memory on a cold boot to prevent that attack.

If you would give your definition we could see if it is right, too.

<comment><USER13> I thought the definition of cold boot was a boot from a powered down state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From a security standpoint, isn't there a common understanding that if an attacker gains physical access to your computer, you already lost?

As a side note, there are so many vulnerabilities constantly coming out that I've almost became desensitized. I'm sure that's not a good thing but it's almost like "when" not "if" someone will just steal my data.

Not sure if anyone agrees or I'm just a one-off...

<comment><USER4> Some parts of a computer are easier to access than others. Like, it's quite easy to access the contents of a hard drive, but not so much some value stored in a particular register in the CPU. That's why it makes sense to encrypt data stored on a hard drive, but we expect the CPU to be able to handle plaintext securely.

Turns out, we should think of RAM more like a hard drive than like something internal to the CPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So do y'all regularly dump liquid nitrogen on your computers after powering them off?

Last I checked, cold boot attacks have to be executed within moments of a computer powering down unless it's immediately put on ice. I don't understand why we're worried about this.

<comment><USER17> Actually, RAM can keep its contents for up to a few minutes after shutdown. See here:

[https://citp.princeton.edu/research/memory/](https://citp.princeton.edu/research/memory/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Leaving the computer on is a cold boot attack now?

<comment><USER19> At first, I could not figure out why sleep mode was an issue, but I think the point is that a cold boot attack has to be performed within minutes of the shutdown, and it has to be a 'hard' (just cut the power) type of shutdown, not an orderly shutdown where the OS stops what's running and then instructs the hardware to shut down. An attacker who gets his hands on a computer in sleep mode is in a position to force a hard shutdown and immediate cold boot when he is ready.</comment></comment>


Brazil warns against pregnancy due to spreading virus - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/23/health/brazil-zika-pregnancy-warning/index.html <comment><USER2> This article has the most obnoxious variety of online advertising (with my pageload, anyway).

1) Beats video ad playing in multiple panes (main pane above article, smaller side panel beside)

2) video ad autostarts, with audio

3) attempt to "Pause" the video is counted as a click, generating a popup page (in defiance of popup blockers)... and doesn't even pause the video.</comment>


Taking PHP Seriously - <AUTHOR> https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329 <comment><USER2>
      Did Facebook, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Etsy, Baidu, Box, and more
      recently Slack all succeed in spite of using PHP? Would they
      all have been better off expressing their application in Ruby?
      Erlang? Haskell?

WhatsApp uses Erlang [0].

There's nothing wrong with PHP or even Python, but these languages are overly flexible and require a disciplined programmer.

[0] [https://www.fastcompany.com/3026758/inside-erlang-the- rare-p...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3026758/inside-erlang-the-rare- programming-language-behind-whatsapps-success)</comment>


Naval Ravikant: Eventually startups will be everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://blog.djinni.co/post/68061191934/naval-ravikant-angellist-eventually-startups-will-be <comment><USER2> Overall some good takeaways; this caught my attention though:

 _One philosophy I have at AngelList is I would rather have someone working on the wrong thing and do it their way and be motivated, than working on the right thing and do it my way and not be motivated. The reason is because I think that management's ability to predict what to work on or what's going to be useful is actually very low._

<comment><USER3> Yeah it's not a bad point. If you care about it (feature, product, whatever), that's at least 1 person in the marketplace who would want it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> AngelList is on path to disrupt LinkedIn in the tech industry and I love it.

(Not that I ever think AngelList will be so broad as to displace LinkedIn in other markets. But in terms of tech, it's clearly headed in that direction.)

I wonder if this is LinkedIn's future: being disrupted one industry at a time by smaller, more curated communities like AngelList.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can we also have the discussion that forcing everyone in to competing private entities based solely on profit motivation has some serious downsides to consider?

</comment><comment><USER6> _This is important because non-technical people have a very hard telling what's possible and what's not and we're in the business of technology so it's important to understand capabilities, outcomes, tradeoffs, all those kind of things._

There's another side to the technology and how it applies to opportunities and business in general: If the businesses and people you seek to help/be your customers don't recognize it despite the problems they face and how your solution can solve it, then you are going to be too early. One of my family members has a small business and completely castes aside the notion that automating things and having software for things like taking orders, tracking specific sales, and how much money is lost due to throwing away perishables at the end of the day for items can make their job easier and their business more efficient. There's a big disconnect because of it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice Article! thanks</comment>


'Several' ARM-based Mac laptops and desktops coming next year, says report - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21196611/arm-macbook-desktop-apple-2021-release-date <comment><USER2> I love the ability to "brew install" software onto my Mac or compile useful scripts and tools for my need, and then SSH into other remote Linux servers for production work.

If they give me an amazingly efficient, and performant ARM mac, but limit my ability to install stuff outside of their Appstore, No Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Most software on homebrew is compiled from source, so I don't think a different CPU would be a problem for 99% of the packages.

Most packages are "bottled" so they don't need to be compiled on the client machine, but there are already different "bottles" for different OS versions, this could simply be extended for different CPUs.

IMHO just switching to a different CPU is not a valid reason for Apple to restrict installing software outside the app store even more.

<comment><USER4> It's a good reason from Apple's perspective, they have all this "legacy" software not distributed through the App Store. A new processor means everything needs to be recompiled, meaning there's zero legacy software. A perfect opportunity to force everything through the App Store and collect rent.

<comment><USER5> It's not what they "typically" do though. When they switched from the old PowerPC architecture to Intel, they provided emulators, and _IF_ you use Apple's libraries, a simple recompile of your app would often be enough.

While some people see it as restricting them, Apple mostly works hard to make their libraries do whatever people needs them to do, but at the same time they keep control, meaning moving to a new architecture is as easy as Apple fixing their libraries, ship a new version, people recompile, and done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apologies if I'm misguided, it's an honest question:

Aren't ARM CPUs lacking certain features that make them non-optimal for compiling code? I seem to remember reading such an analysis here in HN some months ago.

I'm really curious: what would it mean for the Pro market segment if Apple does indeed start a line of ARM laptops and desktops?

<comment><USER3> I have an outdated and slow i5 CPU in my mid-2014 13" MBP and that still works good enough for most of my C++ compiling tasks. I bet any ARM Mac would run circles around that configuration if performance is similar to or better than current iPad Pros.

<comment><USER6> I hear this a lot but have the iPad Pros ever been actually used like that?

I have one and I love it -- it's extremely snappy and responsive and feels powerful. But I wonder if that actually says anything about compiler workflows. I am curious to find out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The Mac's long-rumored transition from Intel processors to Apple's own ARM > designs could be swifter and more extensive than you might have expected.

I have been waiting for it at least since 2008, when Apple bought P.A. Semi.

<comment><USER8> Was PA Semi in the ARM SoC business?

<comment><USER9> PA Semi was in the PowerPC SoC business, not Arm.

<comment><USER7> It bought it for its people. Apple paid a quarter of a billion dollars for P.A. Semi, two years after moving off of PowerPC. Apple has designed a long line of processors, which really took off two years after they bought P.A. Semi.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rendering the world - <AUTHOR> http://mapbox.com/blog/rendering-the-world/

<comment><USER2> I have built one of these map rendering systems on EC2. We decided to go with a 100% on-the-fly + two caching layers (one HTTP on top and one application- specific in between [TileCache]). There were dozens of layers (now there are thousands) so pre-rendering all of them was not feasible. Since I left that gig, the current team has added some processes to "warm" the caches before new data goes live. It just takes a few minutes though, nowhere near 2% of the tilespace.

From what I remember, the biggest performance trick was figuring out how to properly pack worldwide street data (geometry, categorization, and label) + indexes into RAM on a single machine without using a custom file format. It involved stripping out every little unnecessary byte and sorting all of the streets geographically to improve access locality. I believe this got down to ~15GB of shapefiles.

</comment><comment><USER3> This comment will probably get buried and no-one cares, but...

OSM, although a great force for good in the mapping world, is not in its current state a viable competitor to Google Maps and other paid datasets.

You need to start driving around, using LIDAR, and create a massive parcel / address database to really do it right.

You need photos, from the street and from the air. For OSM to really fly we need to see open source hardware combining photography, GPS, LIDAR, that folks can strap to their cars or fly from RC planes or balloons or kites.

Geocoding needs to actually work, worldwide. That's incredibly hard. Its so much more than the visual maps.

Just pointing this all out, since everyone seems to gloss over the fact that Google Maps has a massive monopoly in this area right now.

<comment><USER4> So in other words, OSM has done a pretty good job of mapping the _streets_ of the world, and now it's time to shift the focus to recording the individual _address points_ along those streets?

AFAIK, the tags to use for individual address points have been agreed upon, and in some parts of the world (e.g. Germany, where the maps are essentially finished) this address point data is already useful. Is this, in fact, the case?

<comment><USER5> As with everything in OSM, it depends on which country you are talking about. For example, I believe in (at least some areas of) France the outline of every building has been imported from a high quality government source with address data yet the roads still have to be drawn in from satellite photos or GPS traces.

The US is the home base of Google (amongst other big name tech companies) but it's OSM data is amongst the worst. This is ironic as much of the open data used to map the rest of the world was provided by the US government e.g. NASA radar topography and Landsat photos.

But for the lower level data the best source (often the definitive source e.g. for administrative boundaries that aren't physically present on the ground) is government data, so the quantity and quality of data varies as you cross state (and sometimes county) lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting stuff. This is essentially a coding/compression problem. My advisor at UCLA helped pioneer the computer vision analoge for this. His work tackled encoding textures (or areas of little information) with markov random fields and areas of high information (edges, features) with graphs.

<http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~sczhu/publication.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> Not sure if I understand why real-time tile rendering on servers doesn't work.

Googly clearly does not pre-render tiles and it looks like it works fine for them. Request is made, data collected, relevant tiles rendered, returned to client-side. Yes, I know, Google has $billions in computing resources, but does it really take that much server-power to render tiles? (even for 1,000s of requests/second?)

Is it a matter of data transfer or processing capacity? A screen sized 2048x1536 would need to load 48 tiles at a time. Google's tiles for a city avg about 14KB/tile, so 672KB. 5,000 of these a second is 3.4GB. (I'm a front-end guy so this is a little out of my league.)

<comment><USER8> The problem, generally, is that rendering the tiles is computationally expensive. You have to wade through each feature (thing that _could_ be represented in the tile) and decide if it intersects the tile, then decide if/how it will be rendered, then render and composite it with every other visible feature.

Doing all of that work quickly is possible, it just isn't simple. Also, for most people the data involved changes relatively infrequently. Why have the server render the same tiles repeatedly when you could just cache the result and reduce it to a simple file hosting problem?

Also, your 2048x1536 screen may likely be loading more than 48 tiles. It's common to request tiles around the current viewport and (less common) above/below the current zoom to ensure they're present before they're needed. To see this in action, see how fast/far you have to scroll a google map before you can "catch it" with tiles that aren't loaded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm, I'm curious about how much this is overstating the effectiveness of the optimizations in order to teach about them. With this approach, (it seems like) you would still have to render the highest zoom level first, which already takes 3/4 the render time anyway. There are lots of other optimizations you can do (and they probably are doing) there, but they aren't related to the tree/reference-based ones mentioned here.

The presentation also seems to overstate the redundancy found in the land tiles. You would get savings from water tiles at all zoom levels, which would be enormous, but (looking at <http://mapbox.com/maps>) even if humans only cover 1% of the land, our infrastructure is well enough distributed that it and inland water and other details they've included would preclude redundancy at all but the highest zoom levels (although, in this case, the highest zoom level taking up 3/4 of the tiles _saves_ the most).

With that in mind, I'm wondering about the claimed rendering time of 4 days. That fits nicely with the story told, but with the 32 render servers mentioned at the end, that would seem to be 128 CPU days (though I'm not sure about the previous infrastructure they were comparing it to), which is actually close to the count mentioned early on with a super-optimized query and render process. This is all just supposition, so I don't want to sound too sure of myself, but the storage savings seems to be the big win here (60% from water + redundancy at highest zoom levels), while I would guess that you would save considerably less in processing (15% from water + minor redundancy on land (absent other optimizations e.g. run-length-based ones)).

<comment><USER10> Try zooming in on Russia, Alaska, Brazil, or Egypt and you find a lot of empty tiles. Still, if you can render the whole thing in 4 days I suspect caching what people actually look for would be good enough as people probably hit max zoom on manhattan 1000x as much as they do on some random village in the amazon. The advantage being you can just invalidate tiles as you get new information vs trying to render the whole thing every time you get new street data for Ohio.

<comment><USER9> True, and countries that are empty except for random river squiggles can save a good bit of storage (at the highest zooms so those river squiggles are isolated), but, again, if you have to start with the lowest level first, the described approach isn't saving a whole lot in processing time, even with big empty space.

One thing I forgot to say in my top post, though, is the presentation mentions compositing layers together on the fly, and that is one of the key tools they use, but the presentation drops that thread. I'm curious if originally it had more on that front and what they do with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would it be cheaper to just transmit the 'vector' map data for a region and render it client side vs rendering it after a certain zoom level?

<comment><USER12> My guess is, even client side, vector rendering (I assume you're talking SVG or something similar) is rather CPU intensive, and definitely doesn't do well on mobile devices. In a crowded area like NYC, you'd get slowed to a halt. Mobile would likely be unusable. So maybe it's a user experience trade-off.

<comment><USER13> I was under the impression that Google Mpas for android was vector rendered since honeycomb. Am I wrong or/and are they somehow cheating in some way ?

<comment><USER14> They do. And it's slow. Although, to be fair, I don't know if it's for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find myself in awe of complex technical information distilled into such a beautiful, simple style such as evident in this presentation.

That right brain / left lane combo strikes me as just about the fundamental quality to look for in a startup founder or team.

Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER16> The ideas presented are very interesting, it would be nice if a talk/article about this would be available?

Good job guys

</comment><comment><USER17> A straightforward, understandable presentation to solve a really interesting problem. I like it.

</comment><comment><USER18> The author writes, "I found myself wishing Word had a simple, built-in button for '"cut it out and never again do that thing you just did'". Then I look up at the Clippy image and it has a check box with "Don't show me this tip again". Hmmmm.

</comment><comment><USER19> That makes Satellite View in Google Maps look like a much more amazing feat.

Isn't that algorithm going to erase any islands small enough to not show up in zoom level 5?

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool presentation. I wonder where they get the source data to render the map tiles.

<comment><USER21> From openstreetmap <http://www.openstreetmap.org/> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. Still nothing about the ridiculous Mercator projection.</comment>


How I Got My Stolen Macbook Back Within 24 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/how-i-got-my-stolen-macbook-back-within-24-hours-2011-09-08

<comment><USER2> I normally don't go meta with these things, but what are these stories adding? This is the second story about using Prey in the last 24 hours; does it add anything that the previous story didn't? What about the one before that? Or the one before that?

Prey and software like it work well. We get it. Let's move on.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever had something stolen? If you have not, I can understand the absurdity of your post. Imagine having something that you use for over seven hours a day and is your livelihood suddenly stolen. It only doesn't only affect you emotionally, but financially. I couldn't imagine my code suddenly vanishing.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I've had something stolen. But this isn't Theft News, it's Hacker News. What started as posts about using cool new technology have become "I installed it too!"

As for your code "suddenly vanishing", the theft of a laptop should _at most_ cost you the cost of the machine and a couple hours of work. Encryption should prevent a thief from accessing your data and backups should prevent you from actually losing anything. It sucks to have something stolen, but best practices take it from "I just lost everything" to "I guess I need to find a new box."

Edit: Those same best practices will prevent you from losing your code when your hard drive dies, or you spill coffee on your laptop.</comment></comment></comment>


Relationship and Hypothetical Links Between ADHD and Sleep Disorders - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2603539/ <comment><AUTHOR> A sleep doctor from Stanford told me that they believe as much as 25% of people diagnosed with ADHD may actually suffer from Narcolepsy.</comment>


Show HN: Hypergolix: effortless, end-to-end encrypted IoT development - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Muterra/py_hypergolix_demos/tree/master/echo-101 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello! The tl;dr is: IoT is a totally new arena for privacy and security, and existing best practices either don't work well for eg. playing with a Raspberry Pi, or require trusting companies like Facebook with access to your baby monitors. I want to play with my Pi, and I don't particularly like Facebook etc, so I started working on an alternative.

Golix is an end-to-end encrypted, open protocol that enforces privacy at something approximating layer 5 (not exactly though... Golix doesn't lend itself to easy comparisons with the modern web). Roughly speaking, it's PGP with key encapsulation totally separate from data encapsulation, and everything statically hash addressed and routed by public key fingerprint instead of IP address. That also makes it really powerful (including, for example, seamless LAN fallback when your internet goes out).

Ideals are great, but privacy is mostly only a secondary market concern. Hypergolix is built on top of Golix, with the goal of presenting a compelling economic argument for using the protocol. Put plainly; IoT development is a pain in the ass, and Hypergolix substantially decreases time to market for developing new applications. In the short term, I'm focusing on the Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, etc.

I'm happy to answer any questions and looking forward to the feedback. If you think the project is worthwhile, please consider contributing to our OpenCollective!

Some more information:

[https://opencollective.com/golix](https://opencollective.com/golix) (for monetary support; also backers will have access to a private pre-alpha release)

[https://github.com/Muterra/doc-golix](https://github.com/Muterra/doc-golix) (protocol documentation; includes a security whitepaper)

[https://github.com/Muterra/py_golix](https://github.com/Muterra/py_golix) (protocol implementation)

[https://hypergolix.com/](https://hypergolix.com/) (join the mailing list)

[https://github.com/Muterra/py_hypergolix](https://github.com/Muterra/py_hypergolix) (full Hypergolix source code)</comment>


Try Haxe  - <AUTHOR> http://try.haxe.org <comment><USER2> Haxe sounds too good to be true. Why would anyone use any of the other game engines out there which are targeted towards the mobile world if they could use Haxe? I see many half-donejavascript frameworks and fully-baked lua frameworks...what do they provide that Haxe doesn't? Can anyone who has done significant Haxe work comment to some of the benefits and drawbacks? I ask as someone in search of a gaming engine which can target iOS and Android, so this is very interesting to me.

Thanks.

<comment><USER3> I used haxe for all my games(e.g. <http://cardinalquest.com/>) for over a year now & it's working quite well.

There are some annoying differences between the different targets but it's >99% the same and you can work around the differences.

<comment><USER4> Cardinal Quest looks very cool. Could you share some light from business perspective. Profits?

Thanks.

<comment><USER3> Revenue is mid 5 figure so far from desktop and flash versions, the ios & android version were just released but I'm hoping to break into 6 figures altogether across the game's total lifespan.

<comment><USER5> Did you use Haxe for the iOS and Android versions as well? It wasn't quite there yet when I checked it out a couple of years ago.

<comment><USER3> Yep, all from the same code base.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I'll go and play with Haxe again then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My initial gut reaction to Haxe from the homepage alone, was "Gah, this language is ugly!'. Then I immediately realized that this ugliness was from the fact that the Source example isn't using a monospaced font. It's sort of amazing that, at least for me, using a proportional font just makes things "look wrong", even though everything is syntactically correct.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, ok, I switched back to monospace...

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity do you normally write code in a proportional font?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not usually, but I wanted the app to look a bit less "hardcore techie" than the rest of the Haxe evangelism material :)

<comment><USER8> The little code box on the front page need more space between lines. Currently they're right on top of each-other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> demos :

Flash API to SWF or JS (nme/jeash):

<http://try.haxe.org/#655c1>

<http://try.haxe.org/#E4001>

Flash with custom shaders (hxsl):

<http://try.haxe.org/#93bE1>

Flash + away3d:

<http://try.haxe.org/#9F075>

<comment><USER9> Impressive stuff clemos. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haxe is a nice language, though I don't like it's verbosity (hey, it's almost like Java!). Maybe I'm too much spoilt with coffeescript, ruby, python and other syntax-sugary languages.

<comment><USER11> Hey, it has macros! But it doesn't compile to coffeescript ... yet ...

<http://haxe.org/manual/macros>

<comment><USER12> What's the point of compiling to CoffeeScript when it compiles to JavaScript ?

<comment><USER13> Because trendy technologies.

<comment><USER14> Coffeescript is webscale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You lost me at 'public static function main.'

<comment><USER16> Functions are public by default. You _could_ leave that out.

The main function has to be static and will serve as the entrance point of the _program_ , not the class. So this might just look like too much when in fact this is just a very small code sample.

Did I address some of your concerns, or did I miss the point entirely? Just curious.

<comment><USER17> I think his comment could be refrased as "This language looks like Java"

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, IMHO the fact that Haxe looks familiar to people coming from Javascript, ActionScript, or Java is a plus.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. I'd wager there are substantially more people learning JavaScript these days than PHP, not that PHP looks _too_ foreign, relatively speaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The cross-platform thing is a bold claim. How about a more complete example than that 5 line hello world program to show us how that would work?

<comment><USER20> Here is a good example:

[http://www.joshuagranick.com/blog/2012/04/12/html5-pirate- pi...](http://www.joshuagranick.com/blog/2012/04/12/html5-pirate-pig-sample/)

It's a Bejeweled clone that has been published in the Amazon Appstore, Google Play, BlackBerry App World, the webOS App Catalog and also compiles for iOS, Flash, Windows, Mac, Linux and HTML5

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm torn on haxe. It has a few nice features (macros!) and has many, many targets.

But on the other hand, its syntax and some of its semantics are Java/C++-inspired, whereas something closer to its ML roots would've been so much better.

It might still beat Java for writing Android apps.

<comment><USER22> The syntax is curly-brace, and on a surface level closest to AS3, but the underlying design borrows a lot from Pascal in terms of minimalism(something which Nicolas has mentioned once or twice):

The types are based on JS without truthy or falsy values; comparison is required to get boolean values.

Like Coffeescript, while+iterators are used instead of C-style for loops. (no "do while" blocks either)

Case statements don't fall through.

These little changes(plus a few others) help bring in a lot of the enforced- cleanliness that you'd get with a bigger syntax change, it just "looks" curly- brace. One that I miss is :=, since I have run into the ==/= typo occasionally(it just occurs in much more limited situations). No-truthiness is particularly interesting since you only really notice it's there when you try to port C or JS code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm guessing the server is under some load at the moment as it's running pretty slow. But very cool demo page, been using it the last few days. I'm impressed with how small Haxe's JS output has gotten lately.

Clément hacked this together as a weekend project. Source code is here for those interested: <https://github.com/clemos/try-haxe>

Well done :)

</comment><comment><USER24> In the example in that landing page, there appears to be if statements depending on platform, is this something that's often necessary when using Haxe, or only when you want to perform a specific action for that target language?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://haxe.org/ref/conditionals>

Most standard classes and methods (String, Array, Hash, etc), and a lot of third party libraries are completely cross-platform, so you don't need conditional compilation.

Usually you use conditional compilation either for very low-level per-platform operations / optimizations, or to switch, say, between client code and server code, like here for instance:

<https://github.com/clemos/try-haxe/blob/master/src/App.hx>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So, what's a good resource for _learning_ Haxe as opposed to trying it?

<comment><USER9> Hello misuba, here are some that I have found to be very handy for some projects I have worked on. Hope they are a good start for you, or at least will intice your curiosity.

<http://www.haxenme.org/documentation/examples/tutorials/> <http://haxe.org/doc> <http://www.haxejs.org/> <http://www.haxenode.org/> [http://mikecann.co.uk/personal-project/more-html5-haxe- speed...](http://mikecann.co.uk/personal-project/more-html5-haxe-speed-tests/)

If you do have a go, I recommend HaxeNME for it is a framework that will install all you need for Haxe to just "work" straight up and it also adds some cool stuff like mobile compilation targets (webos, ios, android) and HTML5.

You will have to pick a IDE, people go for FlashDevelop and Mono a lot now, but do read through the Haxe or HaxeNME site setup sections for full list. There are lots of add-ons for a lot of IDE's.

For install, start here: <http://www.haxenme.org/documentation/setup/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've searched a little while and found that it has no support for camera (or sensors) in mobile devices. It looks like HAXE/NME is heavily geared towards game development.

</comment><comment><USER27> I did try Haxe, back in 2010 when I used it to write a silly little domino trail. It was fine for what it does, but I wasn't particularly impressed.

It was interesting to be able to write code in one language then compile it to other destinations but it seemed to me that targeting specific domains and learning all their ins and outs made more sense.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can I use my .swc files in a Haxe project? I love the concept, but losing all my libraries is harsh.

<comment><AUTHOR> Given that a .swc is basically a zipped .swf, this currently depends on runtimes:

\- Haxe/Flash supports embedding .swf libraries : <http://haxe.org/manual/swc>

\- NME/C++ (Android, iOS, ...) has partial support for .swf libraries : [http://www.joshuagranick.com/blog/2012/02/08/quick-notes- on-...](http://www.joshuagranick.com/blog/2012/02/08/quick-notes-on-the-swf- library-for-nme/)

\- NME/HTML5 doesn't seem to support .swf right now, but I think it's being worked out.

Then you have third party tools such as Flump or Flambe to help you: <https://github.com/threerings/flump> <https://github.com/aduros/flambe>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anybody know how you debug with haxe/nme? I see no mention of it, which leads me to believe it's not really supported, which is somewhat understandable given that's it being compiled from haxe code into the various target languages.

<comment><USER30> You can use FlashDevelop's debugger when targeting Flash.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> ... and the editor has autocompletion on dot :)

<comment><USER31> does not work for me

<comment><USER32> tell them what browser you're using and what version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> tbergeron

HaXe is revolutionary, people who really try it always seem to stay with it, they just have to get past the ask lets of questions and actually try some code and stop being negative and putting it in the less able solutions pile. If you want to waste days coding a game in pure objectiveC and then converting it to java just to target two phones then good luck to you! And if you code something in one language it should just be a case of switching some target specific libraries and all your work now works in another target, not recoding in another language style. HaXe is revolutionary because it in achieving what other solutions promise but normally fall short on providing - cross platform cross language, code that is designed to enable not fragment. So try it rather than assume!

You don't have show stopper issues with the compiler ( it outperforms flex compiler on flash target ). Any minor issues are often resolved within hours of reporting, unless they are language design decisions rather than bugs.

Pizzaman

The forum is not well used as most users use the googlegroup 'haxelang'. In terms of frameworks like flex, haxe for flash target does not support flex well, it can be made to work, but largely the problem is because flex is not really just actionscript but has some adobe secrets/hacks etc.. that is why it has not been ported to a cross platform solution yet, need some better engineering decisions although someone I think is working on it. In terms of other frameworks for components there are some but they could be better, try aswing, feel free to chat on IRC if you have problems getting a particular component framework running. Generally haxe is sort of tool that you can build from scratch your visual interface stuff, or if your using js you can mix it up with native libraries.

Jetz

You can add any support for mobile camera's or video you want it interfaces easily with c++/c and there is java support and there is openframework support try this site <http://blog.onthewings.net/>. Haxe is not really a game only language but it excels at allowing users to create visual stuff but still do complex game mechanics, and a lot of users enjoy doing games. It works well in solving the issues of having to mix technologies, being normally a more sane programming language than the target but also mixing well, so you can mix haxe php, haxe js and haxe flash ( <http://haxe.org/doc/remoting> ), or use NME library to hit all the phones and have a web version in flash for users to try online.

</comment><comment><USER34> sounds great, but i'm afraid that this is the reality: <http://haxe.org/forum/thread/2988>

<comment><AUTHOR> So ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> does anyone know any comparison with similar offerings ("cross native") e.g. Appcelerator?

<comment><AUTHOR> NME is particularily good in building "Flash-like" applications, so mainly games.

I think Appcelerator is more adapted to applications that want to use native UIs elements (menus, buttons, layouts, etc).

Then you can still write an Appcelerator app using Haxe :) <https://github.com/skial/haXe-titanium-desktop>

I don't know how/if it's possible to mix both, for example embed a NME app inside an Appcelerator app (besides using UI.WebView and embed it as HTML...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Nope.

Stop fragmenting languages, we don't need another one except if it's revolutionary.

There's some very good principles like the fact that it can compile to many languages but like CoffeeScript I just don't see the point. Want to do some c++ why not using it? Want to do some JavaScript? Then use JavaScript.

There is just too much on the table when it comes to language compilation, I mean if the compiler itself has a problem with your code? It's a bug between what you built and its runtime: what can you do about it? A client is waiting for you, you've got no time to lose contacting the compiler's developers, you're just fucked. Don't get me wrong, I like to play with these languages but that is what they are: toys.

The hard reality is that browsers only support n amount of languages and we are stuck using them.

<comment><USER37> This is just a bunch of unverified blanket statements and what-ifs. From my own experience, I can tell they don't apply to Haxe. Also, Haxe is revolutionary, but to understand that, you'd have to actually use it in production.</comment></comment>


Simple jQuery plugin for fixed-side social media buttons - <AUTHOR> http://thomasalwyndavis.com/2010/09/socialsidebar-jquery-plugin/

<comment><USER2> It doesn't say what the license is, so I'd be a bit careful with just including it in the web pages.

Also the CDN is not that great. It serves an E-Tag, has a short cache time, and doesn't gzip the Javascript file.</comment>


Learn while doing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not a naturally born coder, don't have a CS background, and my career has been more on the sysadmin, project management and IT management side of things. I've always loved building things and I've got several ideas for web apps floating around in my mind. I've done a bit of tinkering in csh, vbscript, asp, javascript, so I'm not starting from absolute zero. To get myself started on this new path, I'm thinking of building some "fun" apps as educational exercises, and then moving to bootstrap some of the ideas that I think people may pay for.<p>Has anyone else gone through this process to having a viable startup or is it the domain of the CS grad? <comment><USER2> This has been done plenty, and the educational execise apps are a really good way to get started.

Find a language that feels right with your way of thinking, and perhaps one that will also be applicable for your sysadmin duties (if that is still relevant).

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been coding for about 12 years now. I do not have a CS degree. I am working on building startups. My major emphasis has been buiding 3-tier web sites with .NET, mostly because .NET is what you find in large corporate environments. I belong to a mailing list in Seattle that has to do with tech entrepreneurs. One of our recent discussion has been on what "stack" you use to build out your website. There are basically 2 schools, the first is the LAMP stack (linux, apache, MySQL and PHP) and the second is .NET/SQL Server. You just need to pick one and go for it.

If you are using csh is sounds like you're already in the linux camp, so I would recommend the LAMP stack. One thing that is quite popular right now amongst tech startups is Ruby on Rails. That would be a good thing to learn. Not only to build your startup but if you get good you can contract yourself out to others. Here are a good set of tutorials to learn RoR.

[http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/article/1816/top-ruby- on-r...](http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/article/1816/top-ruby-on-rails- tutorials)

hope this helps Nick

</comment><comment><USER4> Create something you care about and have fun doing it...you never know where it will go.

And don't worry too much about having the "right" background. The great thing about the web, and technology in general, is that it enables people without the right background or pedigree to turn the world upside down.

Just go do it.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a suggestion, based on your background, pointed out by qhoxie, and provided your Javascript history, I think Perl would be a great language to do your sysadmin, educational and general fun apps. I think you'll find it very fun and highly useful. Hypothetically, it should transition well into those paying apps you touch upon.

I haven't gone through the startup process you speak of, but I can tell you it's not just limited to the CS grads.

Best of luck to you!

</comment><comment><USER6> As Fred Brooks says, "build one to throw away."

Speaking as someone with a CS degree, I can say that the Computer Science is not the hard part of making a good application. Rather, it is the domain knowledge. Build something you and others will want from the start.

The programming will come -- the biggest challenge is creating something people want.

</comment><comment><USER7> In a lot of cases, learn by doing == Startup.

</comment><comment><USER8> startups are for anyone, and some people learn best while doing.

if you have the time and a good idea, go for it

</comment><comment><USER9> a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

its never too late to start, just look at Grandma Moses.</comment>


Ask HN: Is our messaging about sharing contacts for businesses correct? - <AUTHOR>

At Soocial we have recently soft-launched some new products involving cool engineering we've been up to, mainly introducing the ability to share contacts in your business.
We've been syncing people's contacts on every phone, email, Outlook and Mac for some time now. Right as of now we are about to take contact syncing to a new level - you can now sync and share your address book with other people too. Your contacts will now be shared with other Soocial users.
If you run a small business, sharing some critical contacts with your coworkers and all their devices could prove invaluable- or se we believe.
Please visit www.soocial.com and check the messaging out there. We would love the community's feedback on how comprehendable or INcomprehendable our offering is.
Is our messaging correct?
Do you understand the Business Accounts product offering?
What would be the reasons to use it, or what more would you want to know about it? You can check all this out at
http://www.soocial.com/address-book#!business
http://www.soocial.com/features
http://www.soocial.com/intro
Finally, would you like a free trial to start using it?? :)
Thanks in advance, Dimitris at Soocial. <comment><USER2> Clickable links:

<http://www.soocial.com/address-book#!business>

<http://www.soocial.com/features>

<http://www.soocial.com/intro></comment>